Arilia

  natural disaster, physical harm, death, trauma, post-traumatic stress

  [colpse]

  Part 2 - RefugeCh. 1: Cascadia“Behind us!”

  I spun around, firing shots into the group approaching us from behind, while ducking into cover. I hastily reloaded, then peeked around the corner.

  A faint barking sound greeted me. I gnced over to my open window. New neighbors? I hadn’t heard a dog before…

  “I’m surprised this one gets a lot of fck,” Lily’s voice came over the headset. “I’m enjoying the gamepy!”

  “Yeah,” Kira said while taking down more of the bandits charging us.

  Jurien chimed in, “Vehicles are definitely more fun.”

  “Yeah, though 2 had a better story,” I added.

  “No arguments there,” Kira responded as we finished off this group of enemies.

  “Thanks for suggesting we try this series!” Lily said. “It’s cool to finally experience it.”

  It was a few months after the party, and our work schedules aligned enough to introduce Lily to the Bordernds series. She wasn’t as much of a gamer as the rest of us, but was still thankfully having a good time. Though it was getting increasingly interrupted by barking noises coming in through my open window.

  “Privileges of being an adult,” Julien responded as we started looting the camp.

  The barking shifted into a long, pintive howl. I took a deep breath, then sighed. I hate hearing animals in distress.

  “I hope that dog’s okay,” Kira said worriedly.

  I reassured her, “If it keeps up, we could check-” BEEEP BEEEP BEEEP

  I jumped, then stared at my phone.

  “KIRA!”

  “What?!”

  BEEEP BEEEP BEEEP

  BEEEP BEEEP BEEEP

  Matching alerts bred from my friends’ phones through the headsets. Lily’s voice shook, “What... do we... ?”

  A siren started winding up in the distance, the bring tone rising in pitch and volume.

  BEEEP BEEEP BEEEP

  BEEEP BEEEP BEEEP

  “Get outside! We’ll try to pick you up.” I rushed out the words while grabbing the phone off my desk. “If we can’t reach you, follow the pn!”

  Dismissed the alert.

  Shut down?

  No

  No time

  I threw on clothes and raced to the kitchen, heart thudding. Kira was already out in the hallway, getting her shoes on.

  The dog’s howl was eventually drowned out by the loud siren outside, ominously warbling up and down.

  Keys, wallet

  Grab shoes. Put them on? No…

  No time left!

  Get the go bag.

  Open the door

  lock it?

  Kira rushing through with her go bag…

  Keys jingling...

  hands shaking.

  Can’t

  Go!

  Where?

  We dashed out of the apartment and stumbled onto the cold pavement in the middle of the apartment community’s parking lot. My shaking hands desperately pulled my shoes on. Kira looked at me with wide, terrified eyes.

  I reached out to hold her hand, when the ground betrayed us.

  It was just a little bump…

  Then everything wrenched back

  nearly tipping me over

  Violently smming us, back and forth, waves rolling through supposedly solid earth. The carport swayed and colpsed in a loud crash of crumpling metal.

  I held my best friend close as we watched the world crumble around us.

  Everything rolled past our nauseated eyes. Neighbors struggled to stumble and crawl out of their own apartments, some silently terrified, while others screamed. I barely could hear them over the roar of the pnet.

  Windows shattered. The apartment building shifted as cracks snaked up through the outer walls. Half the building crumpled slightly, but it didn’t completely fall. Yet.

  Huh, my brain thought in surreal detachment. We’re probably homeless now.

  Seconds dragged into subjective eons of adrenaline-fueled crity. The earth gradually… slowly… became stable again. The massive earthquake sted eight minutes, and felt far worse than anything I'd ever experienced growing up in California.

  Everything went eerily silent.

  Even the siren had stopped.

  I looked around at the neighbors surrounding us. Families, pets, people from all walks of life. A few children were crying in their parents arms.

  A man rushed out of one of the apartments, looked around and screamed, waving to everyone. I didn’t recognize the words.

  “He’s asking for help!” Kira excimed. We didn’t hesitate to jump up, as our training pushed back the fear.

  Rushing into the apartment, Kira hastily spoke in a nguage that was probably Urdu, learned from her overseas deployment. The man’s name was Takreem. “His mother Qasida is handicapped. He couldn’t get her out alone!”

  Dust drifted from ominous cracks in the ceiling. Fallen furniture blocked much of the living space. We cleared enough to get through.

  I heard a woman’s voice calling out, and Takreem responded.

  We found her on the floor of a small bedroom near the door. She reached out to us.

  I wouldn’t normally risk moving someone without a gurney, but the building was clearly unstable. I briefly expined a two-handed seat carry to Kira, who transted for Takreem. We were stronger than Kira, so he helped me lift his mother, who wrapped weak arms around our shoulders.

  Kira helped keep her stable as we cautiously carried Qasida past the debris to a wheelchair at the entrance to the apartment. Kira unfolded the chair, then Takreem and I carefully pced the elderly woman into it.

  After wheeling his mother out to safety, Takreem looked at us with tears in his eyes. He said something that didn’t need transtion.

  Once outside, our worries turned to Jurien and Lily. We tried our phones. Nothing. However, they lived in new, small homes, built after the earthquake risks were recognized.

  “They’ll be okay,” Kira reassured me.

  I nodded, and we turned our attention to the people we could assist.

  Kira and I spent the next half hour helping other members of our community to safety. We were lucky nothing had fully colpsed, but an aftershock might hit at any moment, so we hurried. These apartment buildings had been constructed half a century ago on river-adjacent ground that liquified during the earthquake. The ones nearest the river suffered the most damage, with many people trapped inside, while others further away were mostly intact.

  Once everyone was safely out of the buildings, Kira and I finally packed up our truck with our go bags and a few extra supplies.

  Jurien lived closest, so we headed to his pce first.

  We couldn’t get any information about how bad it was. Power was out, no phone service, and even the car radio was silent.

  But based on what we saw on the road…

  It was bad. Really bad. The earthquake had to be above a 9, and Seattle wasn’t ready for anything that big.

  We picked up Jurien and headed towards Lily. My fears deepened when we encountered a traffic jam.

  There was a river between us and Lily. I couldn’t see the bridge, but no cars were moving that direction. Many people were standing outside their cars, trying to use their phones.

  We tried another route.

  Another colpsed bridge.

  I felt a pit in my stomach.

  “Lily was in a safer building,” Kira said gently. “She has a car. She knows the pn. She’ll meet us at the rendezvous, she just has to go the long way around.”

  It tormented me, not knowing if my girlfriend was hurt, not knowing where she was, or how to help her.

  I needed a moment.

  We pulled over into a parking lot. I stepped out, looking around at the ruins of a strip mall. I gazed up at seagulls drifting through the sky. They probably fled the coast. How big was the tsunami?

  I felt so helpless.

  I knew there was no quick way to get to Lily, and even if we did, we might end up all trapped in the city as people started evacuating. Hopefully she was already on her way out. We’d have no way of finding her on the road. We just had to get to the meetup spot, and hope for the best.

  I took a deep breath, then got back in the car. I knew what we had to do. I just hated it.

  Kira hugged me while Julien reached out and squeezed my hand. Our evacuation pn felt extreme now that we were putting it into action. Kira, Julien and I reassured each other. We prepared for this. It’ll be okay.

  We drifted, dreamlike, through a surreal ndscape of twisted buildings and buckled roads, navigating around ndslides and fallen trees. Fleeing to the mountains.

  We left our homes behind. Our friends, companions, jobs.

  Hopefully not for long, but...

  Years ago, I shared a documentary with Kira. People used to think our part of the Ring of Fire was quieter than rest. Then, back in the 1990s scientists discovered the offshore fault lines build up the same amount of tension as California or Japan, but release that energy much less often, causing catastrophic megaquakes every thousand years or so. Cascadia had only ever experienced small earthquakes in modern times. The buildings and infrastructure simply hadn’t been built to withstand the disaster that just occurred, and things were going to go from bad to worse.

  We prepared as best we could. We made go-bags. Pnned evacuation routes. I warned everyone I knew, and coordinated specific pns with my closest friends. My other acquaintances and lovers were too spread out around the city to help out. I just hoped they took the warning seriously.

  Kira got us on a list she knew about from her private security job. Some tech billionaire bought a ski resort and poured money into it as a kind of doomsday-prepper disaster refuge. It wasn’t hard for us to get accepted, since I’m a medic and Kira’s a veteran. It seemed a little out-there and silly at the time, but didn’t cost us anything, so why not?

  Just in case.

  Then we stamped down our fear. We continued living our lives, mostly forgetting the worry for years. I didn’t even update our go-bag the way you should. We did get Julien and Lily on the list as plus-ones, but otherwise put it out of our minds. There was a low risk of a Big One ever happening. Just a one-in-three chance in our lifetime. Much more likely to get lots of smaller quakes.

  Now...

  Now we were fleeing. Not from the quake or its devastation, but from the encroaching fear and desperation of millions of people behind us.

  ~~~~~

  Over time, our shaken conversations drifted into silence.

  Mountains climbed over us. We slipped unseen between the giants, as sharp crags tucked us away into a hidden alcove.

  The smooth, well-maintained county highway snaked along the bottom of a steep ravine. A clear river tumbled over smooth stones to the left of the road, ten feet down from rocky embankment.

  A cliff jutted up and out of sight to our right. Harsh lines and sharp blocks of exposed bedrock hinted at the huge machines that carved a path here generations ago.

  Soon we were forced to stop, and survey the scene ahead.

  A tattered net at the top of the cliff had done its best to hold back an avanche. This time, nature was too furious to stop the tide of stone.

  I carefully navigated our old truck around the pile of debris. “Why does driving on the wrong side of the road scare me more than everything else?” I ughed sharply as I swiveled the steering wheel. “It’s not like we’ll... -oh.” A rock thumped the side-view mirror with a loud csh. “Oh darn...”

  Kira reassured me gently. “It’s ok. You’re doing okay.” She put a hand on my shoulder.

  “It’s not like anyone will notice,” Julien attempted to joke.

  “Ouch!” I groaned and ughed.

  It was fair, though. Just another scrape added to the other scratches, dents, and dings. There wasn’t a corner of the truck that didn’t have some sign of wear and tear. Kira and I had been hoping to get something better for driving around the city. It was an older, smaller vehicle, before they computerized everything, which was nice. We didn’t really need a truck, though. Never hauled anything. Minor repairs seemed pointless when the mechanic bill would cost more than the value of the vehicle. Just repce it, right? Only we never had quite enough money, and now...

  My mind continued rambling internally to distract me from my worry for Lily.

  We picked up speed as we left the ndslide behind us. At least we hadn’t punctured a tire on shards of rock. Even in normal circumstances, it would probably be difficult to get roadside assistance this far into the Cascade Mountains.

  Turning around another bend in the valley, the mountains finally receded half a mile in either direction, cut away by ancient ice sheets.

  Wide pastures swept by. Stately-grazing horses, cattle, and alpacas didn’t even lift their heads to watch us pass. I spared a gnce their way, before flicking my eyes back to the road.

  The sun gradually fell below the peaked mountaintops. Long, jagged shadows stretched across rolling farmnd.

  My thoughts drifted back.

  To the oppressive, clenching, shaking fear of Lily trapped...

  I shook my head. Gotta think of something else.

  Luckily the route was clear along Highway 2! Didn’t see any avanches until this back road. When were the bridge repairs done? There was an accident with a semi-truck a few years back. Recently rebuilt. That’s why we took this route. The I90 causeway at Snoqualmie Pass was old. Constructed before the 80s. Probably didn’t make it. How many were there when it happened? Were there any kids...

  Spiraling again...

  “Do they grow apples around here?” I abruptly asked.

  “Further east, I think,” Julien responded with a shrug, not having noticed my tension. “Too cold up here, I guess? Don’t know for sure.”

  I stayed focused on the ndscape around us. Focused on the present. Rows of tidy trees swept by, deep green, glow fading as the sunlight dipped below the mountains. We left the pasturend and climbed higher into the twilight valley. “How much further?”

  Kira pulled out her phone, then froze. No signal… Right.

  She stuffed it back into her pocket with a sigh, then tugged out a map book I stashed under the seat. Unfolding it and squinting, eyes darting around, she shrugged. “We should probably switch.”

  “Yeah.”

  She wasn’t great with maps.

  After a brief stop on the side of the highway to trade pces, I clicked on the overhead light, then oriented the map while Kira got us back on the road.

  “We just passed Harvey’s Apples,“ I said. I gnced at Julien in the back seat, and we shared knowing looks. Old joke.

  Kira groaned, “Fuck you. I’d be rolling my eyes if I wasn’t driving!”

  I grinned and returned to navigating. “Two more crossings.” Then a few minutes ter, “Take a left.” The pavement gave way to crunching gravel on a narrow one-ne access road. We carefully navigated along the twisting mountainous path for twenty minutes through a dense forest.

  I gestured. “Left ahead. Yep, right here. Then we... oh.”

  “Is that them?” Julien asked.

  “Maybe?” Kira replied hesitantly.

  Trees loomed over us in the darkness. A bck SUV blocking the road ahead lit up, as someone stepped out from the passenger side, with a tablet illuminating a dark face.

  I gnced at Julien nervously, then Kira. The thought fshed through my mind of her putting the car in reverse, but my best friend simply smiled and waved in recognition. I released the breath I found myself holding.

  “Keep your hands visible,” Kira whispered quietly, keeping hers on the steering wheel. I put mine on the dashboard, while Julien reached his out to rest his on Kira’s shoulders.

  Even following an established pn, greeting a stranger on a dark backroad in the mountains raised too many red fgs to suspend disbelief in a horror movie. Especially since this person had a military-looking rifle slung across her intimidating body armor.

  Is it actually called body armor? I couldn’t remember. This was more of Kira’s thing.

  Kira rolled down her window and chatted with... Shandra? I couldn’t quite catch her name at the time.

  The whole experience felt surreal. Like getting a traffic ticket.

  Shandra checked off our names, then waved to the vehicle. It revved up and cleared the road for us to pass. We couldn’t see far through the dense forest. Ahead of us, a gate rattled open in a wall, just past a culvert spanning a creek. Like a moat. If only there were actually castles here in America, I thought, not for the first time.

  Into the brightly-lit ski resort. “Huh,“ I grunted, looking around at the paved, illuminated walking paths snaking into the forest, leading to various cabins and rger buildings.

  There’d no longer be rich tourists coming to pay lots of money to hastily slide down a mountainside. Now, it might become a hopeful refuge from a suddenly dangerous world.

  Julien mused thoughtfully, “Looks like the dam wasn’t damaged.” He oversaw maintenance of hydroelectric pnts as part of his civil engineering job.

  A guide hopped in the truck and led us to a tiny one-room cabin, where we parked. The shared living space inside had a table and chairs in the middle, with bunk beds along the sides, wardrobes, and a small bathroom in the back. Our skills were useful enough to give our group some privacy, compared to the rge bunkhouses other residents might occupy.

  Our guide provided an overview of the basic yout and schedules for the community, then left. We idled in the cabin half an hour before creeping curiosity and dread got the better of us.

  We navigated trails through brush-cleared forest to a rge, brightly-lit mess hall. A few dozen people sat in hushed silence watching satellite TV.

  The voice of a haggard-looking newscaster spoke over aerial footage in that matter-of-fact, detached way they use for emotional distance.

  “...footage from Isma Nahas, a light-aircraft pilot who took off from Renton airport at 8:19 am. We’re still trying to get in contact with the KOMO 4 news team, or...”

  The unsteady camera panned over a ndscape that looked haphazardly, casually bombed. Kirknd, according to the news anchor. I barely recognized it.

  I yearned to know how Lily and the others were doing. Disaster coverage would often include personal stories, but the odds of anyone I knew showing up were vanishingly small.

  After a few minutes, they started a recap. For those now joining us.

  At 8:23 am Pacific Time on March 11th the Cascadia Subduction Zone experienced a megathrust event measuring 9.4 on the Moment Magnitude scale. Multiple Pacific tectonic ptes moved under North America along numerous fault lines stretching over a thousand miles. An equally long tsunami, measuring up to 130 feet high, erased the coastline from Aska to northern California. A matching westbound wave hit a hastily-warned Japan hours ter.

  The st Cascadian megaquake occurred hundreds of years ago. It wasn’t until the 1990s when seismologists rediscovered the danger from oral histories of Native American survivors, Japanese Edo-era records, and geological findings.

  California had more frequent, smaller shakes all the time, so it was well-prepared, and suffered minimal damage. Japan likewise had few deaths, despite the tsunami causing immense devastation to coastal communities.

  However, most structures in the American Pacific Northwest were constructed before the risk to the region was identified. As a result, even though the tsunami lost force before reaching Seattle or Vancouver, the destruction from the earthquake alone was apocalyptic.

  Old homes, offices, hospitals, and fire stations were leveled. Many modern buildings were damaged beyond safe habitation. Landslides and colpsed bridges cut off interstate connections, while seaports and airports sunk into liquefied, artificial ndfill, leaving few options for disaster relief. Dozens of hazardous chemical facilities ruptured, and fires spread unchecked through hundreds of cities.

  Low estimates put the immediate death toll at over a hundred thousand. However, the true crisis, the long-term fear... was the bckout.

  A normal power outage might st a few hours or days, and rarely spread beyond a single city.

  Now most generating pnts in the entire region were critically damaged, and untold numbers of power lines had fallen. Authorities estimated it might take months to restore power to any of the affected cities.

  With no power to run the pumps, 17 million people were about to run out of clean drinking water. The possible long-term death toll stretched into the millions.

  We watched until we were too exhausted to feel anything at all.

  ~~~~~

  My worry increased as Lily didn’t show up the next day. Or the next. I had no way of contacting her or knowing what happened. Maybe the evacuation traffic was worse than we expected, and she’s just having difficulty getting to us?

  She’ll get here. She had to.

  Kira was on security rotation every day. She was gone before I woke up, then came back in te morning, sleeping through the day. Night was the most dangerous time, apparently.

  Aftershocks rippled through the valley for days. None as bad as the first quake, though they caused everyone to freeze and collectively hold our breath until the shaking passed.

  The billionaire who funded this pet project town never showed up either. I saw his haggard family occasionally, who arrived by helicopter before us. No one ever confirmed what happened to him. From what Kira heard, he might have been on a bridge that colpsed. I was thankful I knew Lily was in her home when it happened.

  With the rich guy missing, who did that leave in charge? Kira wasn’t sure. A few assistants and underlings showed up, but no one with clear authority. The local head of security for the ski resort was organizing things for now. Shandra, who we met at the gate.

  I watched TV while Kira worked each day. A few of us sat there in the mess hall. The unnecessary or unneeded, lingering in a fugue state.

  They thankfully didn’t need my skills yet. This odd, tiny town had a world-css doctor. Made sense. Their backup never arrived, but we had at least two people with medical training.

  So I watched TV, along with the others.

  We watched fires and vast smoke plumes bnket beleaguered cities. There was no water to fight the bzes. The smoke reached us in the valley before long. Wildfire smoke was bad enough, but this? The cremated remains of thousands of buildings was far more toxic. Everyone started wearing masks outdoors, and even then, people started coughing.

  Huge, repurposed cargo ships anchored off seaports along the coast. Unable to enter demolished cargo bays, they offloaded supplies onto smaller vessels. Not enough. Never enough.

  Desperate refugees fled north, and fighting broke out with the Canadian border patrol.

  The flood of people into the community tapered off over the week. My fear for Lily rose with each passing day. I talked to Kira about what we could do, but ultimately, any ideas fell short. The cell network wasn’t coming back online any time soon. It was forty miles from the city to the refuge. Lily might not have even taken a direct route, and could be anywhere. There was no way to find her.

  ~~~~~

  A week came and went.

  I was in the mess hall when someone rushed in. A murmur of excitement spread through everyone in the room. Newcomers! It was the first group in a few days. I put on my mask, and hurried outside, along with a few other people still missing loved ones.

  The mid-afternoon sun wavered at us through hazy orange skies. The thick smell of smoke wafted faintly through our masks.

  I looked up the road to the entrance. Instead of a car, a dozen haggard people trudged wearily down from the front gate, mostly women and children. I recognized Kira escorting them.

  I couldn’t see the faces of the other arrivals clearly, covered in makeshift masks, soot, and dirt. Someone next to me suddenly ran forward, and embraced a young man among the arrivals, talking excitedly.

  I did not recognize her at first.

  The long, silken, bck hair I loved to run my fingers through was hacked short in ragged clumps. The bright face I used to kiss was distant and empty. Her clothes were dirty and torn, with a strip of cloth wrapped around one arm, and a dark bck spot staining the white fabric. More dark stains were spttered across her chest.

  I held her. I cried. She returned the hug weakly, frail in my embrace. “Navalea,” she whispered hoarsely.

  “I… I thought you…”

  “I’m here. It’s okay.” Her hollow voice spped me with guilt.

  Here she was comforting me, when Lily was the one in need! I felt a confusing swirl of despair and relief, happiness and anger. I desperately wanted to punish whoever had hurt her. Most of all, I felt that creeping, sickening guilt growing within my heart.

  It was irrational. I knew that. There was no way I could have rescued her. Even so…

  My medical training saved me from spiralling completely into self-loathing.

  “What happened?” I asked while carefully holding her injured arm, inspecting the makeshift bandage. Other people crowded around us, but it appeared there were only a handful of reunions among the crowd. Half a dozen newcomers stood back, watching hesitantly.

  “Someone tried to take our supplies. They… I…” Lily stared off into the distance. “I defended us…”

  A woman next to her pced a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “You did what you had to. Thank you.”

  Lily looked so… wounded. Not just from the gunshot, but from something far worse.

  “I have to get back,” Kira said gently, gesturing to the entrance. In my concern for Lily I’d forgotten my best friend was there. Another security guard had come to take her pce. “Will you two be okay?”

  “Yes. I’ll take everyone to the clinic.” I embraced Lily’s hand, and she weakly squeezed me back.

  We made our way to the infirmary. The buzz-cropped guard escorting us stationed herself in one corner of the room. Some people among this group clearly weren’t on the approved list. That might get complicated, I thought briefly, before focusing back on my friend.

  I got some water and applesauce for Lily while the doctor checked her out.

  I was reluctant to leave her side, but the other newcomers needed help too. I took care of cleaning and bandaging their minor scrapes and cuts while the doctor focused on Lily’s more-serious injury. She was lucky. It was a small-caliber pistol wound, in and out, and the bullet hadn’t hit anything major. The dried blood on her shirt wasn’t her own.

  After getting tended, Lily rested on the cot, drinking thirstily and eating the applesauce. I rejoined her once my duties were complete.

  “It was…” she started saying, then paused.

  “You don’t have to talk,” I reassured her. “Just rest a while.”

  Lily nodded, then finished eating.

  Another one of the security personnel came in briefly to let Lily know her shotgun was secured in the armory. She acknowledged him, and accepted the paperwork he provided.

  Lily didn’t own a shotgun. At least, not before this?

  I wasn’t sure how to process any of this. She had clearly gone through some shit. I obviously didn’t want to pity her; that wouldn’t help. I tried to think of her not as a victim, but as a survivor of events I could barely fathom. I struggled to see her as the same woman I’d grown close to over the past few months. Would she even want me to treat her the same? How would I even talk about any of this?

  Without a clear idea of what to do, I let my worries simmer on the back burner of my mind and tried to focus on giving Lily whatever support she needed.

  Julien joined us in the infirmary and shared a big hug with Lily. Then she showed us some of the manga she’d saved from home! Pulling that out of her pack, and reading it together, sparked some of the first joyful looks and smiles I’d seen since her arrival.

  Eventually, the doctor cleared her for release. Julien and I led her to our cabin.

  “I’m gonna give you some privacy, and head back to the mess hall.” Julien said while giving Lily one st hug. “Let me know if you need me!” He waved, and disappeared down a trail.

  Lily dropped off her stuff inside and looked around.

  “Top bunk!” she excimed confidently.

  “Hey, I already…”

  “Cimed it? Before I got here? Psh…” She started undressing as I got the shower going. “You know that wouldn’t hold up in court.”

  “Yeah, fair enough,” I said and ughed. I was happy to see a little of her old personality peeking through.

  I helped her get clean. She was still weak and emaciated, stumbling occasionally, struggling to wash herself and change clothes. We didn’t have any real food in the cabin, but I gave her a pack of trail mix, which she hungrily devoured at the table. Then I caught her up on information about the community.

  Kira and Julien joined us after Kira’s shift ended. We pulled out a board game and pyed te into the night, before finally heading to bed. I joined Lily on the top bunk. It was difficult on a twin mattress, but we managed, just barely.

  I held her close as she cried herself to sleep.

  Lily never talked about how she got shot. Not with me, at least. I eventually convinced her to speak with the therapist in the community, and their conversations remained private. I hope it helped? I just did my best to aid her recovery in the days ahead.

  Her strength returned over time. Most of her bubbly personality came back, though tempered by what she’d experienced. After a few days, when she felt better, we made love again. It seemed to release a lot of the stress built up inside both of us.

  She did share the basics of her journey. Her car got stuck behind thousands of other people trying to flee the city. She met up with other groups heading north, who travelled together for safety. Some split off along the way to meet up with loved ones in the area. Most of those who remained in the group were recent immigrants to Seattle, and had nowhere else to go. Lily led them here.

  Kira came home one day obviously frustrated.

  “They’re going to kick them out,” she said angrily. “There’s women and children, and they’re going to kick them out.”

  “What?” I said, looking up from the manga Lily and I were reading.

  “Oh, FUCK THAT!” Lily shouted and stood from the table, storming out of the cabin.

  “Lily, wait!” I hurried after her, with Kira close behind.

  Our new home was about to face its first test.